Coaching received by the athlete is typically verbal, though it can be written, while a formal evaluation, if given, can be electronically provided or via letter or written word. These are then either remembered or not, journaled or not, during the course of the practices in between competition events and worked on to varying degrees based on a number of factors, including memory, stress, commitment, motivation, distractions or other outside factors. As such, comments by coaches get lost or forgotten while, in other cases it can cause athletes to spend more team thinking about too much rather than focusing on the few things that provide the most improvement opportunities.
Conventional athletic competition information devices such as heat sheets are typically available at athletic competitions or meets and are produced prior to the event in order to provide information to athletic competitor, parents and coaches regarding the events in which each athlete is competing, the heat (sub group of the overall group that is competing in, say, Freestyle or Backstroke in swimming, a weight class in wrestling, or the 400-meter run in track), the lane or match in which they will actually compete as well as their entry time or other qualifying criteria, which is a measure of how well that athlete has previously performed in that event (often in minutes and/or seconds).
An athletic competition takes place in its appropriate venue (e.g., swim meets take place at a pool) and is comprised of events featuring one particular discipline within the sport or events featuring several or all disciplines (e.g., track meets feature many disciplines, swim meets feature many or all disciplines). Each athletic competition is attended by athletes of differing age groups or other classifications such as weight or size (e.g., martial artists and/or wrestlers generally compete in a class or experience group). Generally, athletes in each group or classification compete against each other and the boys compete against boys in their same group or classification and girls compete against girls in their same group or classification. Mathematically, based on the number of lanes in a pool or on a track or other areas of competition and the number of athletes competing in a particular discipline, athletes are divided into “heats” or “matches” (e.g., a pool with 5 lanes with 50 swimmers for an age group would have 10 heats of 5 swimmers each). They are first seeded by their entry time or other qualifying criteria, which is generally the fastest historical time or best performance in which that athlete has performed in that event.
Each discipline is assigned an “event number” (e.g., in swimming, Girls 10 & Under 50-Meter Backstroke could be event #5, while the Boys equivalent could be event #6). Each athlete is then assigned a lane or location (for example, lane or ring 1, 2, 3. 4 or 5) for the discipline and heat or match in which she or he is competing. They are then timed either by electronic or stopwatch to determine how fast they can complete the event (e.g., a 10 year old girl might finish Event #5, Girls 10 & Under 50 Meter Backstroke in 45 seconds) or judged for points scored (e.g., a wrestler in a particular weight class scores a certain number of points for performing certain moves successfully).
Finally, many sports governing bodies provide motivational goals for athletes. For example, USA Swimming, the governing body for competitive swimming in the United States, utilizes a specific formula every four years, coinciding with the Summer Olympic swimming competition, to reset the “motivational times” it publishes for swimmers in each age group based upon that the times achieved by swimmer's in that year's Summer Olympics. These “motivational times” are meant to help swimmers of a particular age group progress as they get older both within their group and as they move from one age group to the next. (For example, following the 2012 Olympics, a 10-year old girl whose best historical time in the 50-Meter Backstroke is 45 seconds would have a “BB” time under the USA Swimming motivational time regime because her time would be faster than the “BB” time mark of 49.59 seconds and slower than the “A” time mark of 43.49 seconds. Such a swimmer would then aspire to get an “A” time by swimming faster than 43.49 seconds in a future meet.)
In most athletic competitions, the event number, order of the events, best historical times or scores, and motivational times or goals are provided in a “heat sheet” or similar program that is prepared by the meet sponsors. A “heat sheet” typically lists all of the events in order and within each heat or match lists the athletes who will compete in each event. The athlete, parent, or spectator buys the heat sheet or program, hunts through the pages to find the relevant event/heat/larie or location information, uses a marker to draw and fill out a grid on the heat sheet with the athlete's information and/or on the athlete's arm or leg for the athlete to reference throughout the competition. For a multi-day meet, there would be multiple permanent ink grids on an athlete's body. Meet officials also use heat sheets to keep track of each event.
The following information contained in a heat sheet is maintained in a sports event management system that tracks who is competing and her or his age or other classification, team, and best time or score in the event to determine how the athlete should be seeded or ordered. Heat sheets themselves are simply print outs or electronic copies of the data organized for the meet. There are other devices on which information can be written for athletes, parents, supporters and meet officials to inform them about the details of the events, and there are applications that display the above information in various electronic formats on computers and/or smartphones. Heat sheets can and do often get lost (or wet being around swimmers/pools), and athletic competitors cannot always have an electronic device handy to check the information.
A pre-printed temporary tattoo requires access to water, towels, etc. as well as introduces operational challenges to the athletic club to implement their use. Temporary tattoos require the actions to complete. During the assembly process, errors are common due its manual nature, creating waste and causing the tattoos not to stick properly. The amount of work inherent in performing the various temporary tattoo functions is burdensome and very difficult to scale to large volumes of athletes, especially given the volunteer nature of most athletic clubs.
Further, in between an athlete's events it is often unclear as to the amount of time to elapse before the athlete's next event. During this time, athletes and parents try to determine the need for warm up or warm down, nutritional consumption and/or alternative uses of that time to help drive mental and physical relaxation, enjoyment or recuperation.
Many sports have a multiple-event format including swimming, wrestling, track and field, karate and others. Swimming and track meets have events, heats and lanes. Karate and wrestling meets include multiple match locations in single or multiple venues, making it important for participants and their fans to know when and where events take place.